Method and Device for Composing a Menu

ABSTRACT

Multimedia content of exchangeable storage media, such as optical discs, may be extended by bonus content that is downloaded via Internet connection and stored on a local storage device. An improved method for integration of different menu items relating to on-disc content and downloaded content provides flexibility and a simple, low cost solution. The method for integration of downloaded bonus content into a menu comprises defining one or more placeholders within a menu, determining a storage location or naming convention for bonus content, declaring for each placeholder an attribute providing a unique association to a specific type of bonus content, providing a button image, detecting presence of bonus content data, replacing the associated placeholder by the associated button image and enabling an associated action to be taken when said button is selected.

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.10/578,966, filed on May 11, 2006 which claims the benefit ofInternational Application PCT/EP2004/010234, filed Sep. 13, 2004 andwhich claims the benefit of European patent applications No.EP03025926.1, filed on Nov. 12, 2003 and EP03026859.3, filed on Nov. 24,2003. This application is also crossed-referenced with U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 13/693,819, filed Dec. 4, 2012, Ser. No. 13/693,833filed on Dec. 4, 2012 and ______, filed Aug. 22, 2013.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to a method and device for composing anelectronic audio-visual menu.

BACKGROUND

Devices for playback of multimedia content retrieved from a pre-recordedexchangeable storage medium, which is today usually an optical disc, mayprovide the ability to store additional content pertaining to a specificexchangeable storage medium. An example is a DVD player with integratedhard disc drive (HDD). Additional content can be downloaded from theInternet or retrieved from another exchangeable storage medium in orderto upgrade the content, even after a customer has acquired apre-recorded disc. Examples for such additional content are bonustracks, subtitles in specific languages, advertisement trailer updatesor games related to a movie. Such functionality usually requires arelatively expensive fully programmable device platform, e.g. a set ofJava™ programs such as Java 2 MicroEdition (J2ME).

A playback system that contains such a completely programmableenvironment can detect additional content items and visualize them inthe user interface by Java™ programs that can both be pre-authored atdisc creation time or downloaded together with the bonus content items.

Today's multimedia storage systems allow mainly for audio, video, stillimages, graphical and control information as part of the multimediacontent. Typically, a storage medium also contains a menu that ispresented to the user on screen and that consists of a graphical layoutcomprising still images, audio and possibly video information. Suchmenus feature buttons or “hot spots” that can be navigated to andselected by the user through a remote control. The action to be takenwhen a menu button is pressed may be part of said control information.In current DVD player devices the mentioned functionality is realized bydevice firmware and the control information cannot be adapted toadditional content either by the content author or the user of thedevice.

The existence and nature of the additional content that is added to theoverall presentation is usually not known at the time when apre-recorded storage medium is authored. Later, additional content itemsmay be available for playback and must be navigated to by the user witha menu. For presenting these additional content items in a menu to theuser anyway, known solutions are based on downloading both additionalcontent and a complete menu, including the additional content items.

Further, menus for PC software often use visible but inactive, so-called“greyed-out” buttons that become active as soon as the associatedcontent item is available. In this case the appearance and location ofthe respective button is predefined.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

When an exchangeable pre-recorded storage medium for audio-visualcontent is authored, its menu would not initially contain buttons thatare actually trying to trigger the playback of bonus content, since thebonus content would not itself be part of the disc content. It may noteven be known at disc creation time what kind of bonus content mightbecome available later. However, a simple and therefore cheap method forupdating the described type of menus is desirable.

The problem to be solved by the invention is to provide a simplifiedmethod for adapting a menu that relates to an exchangeable storagemedium, when the multimedia content of the storage medium is expanded byrelated multimedia content from other sources.

Such method is disclosed in claim 1. A storage medium that contains menudata according to the invention is disclosed in claim 9. A correspondingplayback device that utilizes the method is disclosed in claim 10.

According to the invention, the method for automatically composing anelectronic audio-visual menu for selection of audio-visual data, whereina first portion of audio-visual data and a first portion of menu data isretrieved from an exchangeable storage medium, and wherein a relatedsecond portion of audio-visual data and a second portion of menu datamay be obtained from a second data source, comprises that the menu thatis generated from the first portion of menu data contains one or morevisible, selectable buttons and at least one invisible placeholder thatcannot be selected, and the first menu data contains one or moreattributes associated with the placeholder. Further, the methodcomprises automatically detecting if said second portion of menu data isavailable, extracting an attribute that is associated with the secondportion of menu data, and comparing it with an attribute associated withthe placeholder. Finally, based on said comparison the placeholder isreplaced with a visible and selectable button defined by the secondportion of menu data if the attributes match.

The menu buttons are usable for presenting content selection choices tothe user. A specific location or naming convention for later-to-be-addedbonus content items may be predetermined when the medium is authored, sothat a unique association can be made between a specific bonus contentitem and one of the placeholders, wherein such association is declaredas an attribute of a placeholder. This enables an easy integration ofdownloaded bonus content into the menu.

For providing a button image that represents the downloaded bonuscontent in a graphical way and that can be downloaded together with saidbonus content, the inventive method comprises identifying automaticallythe presence or absence of any related bonus content and—in case of itspresence—determining which placeholder is appropriate, replacing theappropriate placeholder with a button represented by the associatedbutton image, and enabling an associated action to be taken when saidbutton is selected and pressed by the user.

The action that is associated with such a button may be describedalready together with the placeholder, e.g. the placeholder descriptioncontains the command “play PlayList BonusA”, wherein “BonusA” is aplaylist not initially present on the medium. The action may also bedescribed as part of the downloaded bonus content item and associated tothe menu button together with the downloaded button image.

Thus, from a user perspective the full required functionality isprovided, namely the ability to present downloadable content in a menu,additionally to the pre-recorded multimedia content of an exchangeablemedium, e.g. DVD. This functionality comprises performing the actualdownload of content and menu related data, managing downloaded contentand making the existence of downloaded content visible to the user ofsaid exchangeable medium.

A playback device that incorporates the inventive method is a device forgenerating audio-visual representation data and a related audio-visualmenu containing buttons for selecting portions of the audio-visualrepresentation, and comprises means for retrieving a first portion ofaudio-visual data and a first portion of menu data from an exchangeablestorage medium, means for retrieving a second portion of audio-visualdata and a second portion of menu data from a second data source, meansfor detecting if the first portion of menu data contains data for aplaceholder or a first attribute specifying a placeholder, means fordetecting if the second portion of menu data contains data for replacinga placeholder, means for extracting from the second portion of menu dataa second attribute specifying which placeholder to replace, means forcomparing the first and the second attribute specifying the placeholderto replace, and means for generating data for the function and for avisible representation of a menu button based on said comparison.

Advantageously, the inventive method does not require a fullyprogrammable device platform, such as a PC, to be available. Morespecifically, the proposed very simple and cheap platform is sufficient,being pre-programmed by the device manufacturer rather than beingprogrammable by the content author.

Further, the inventive method consumes less download bandwidth thanknown methods for menu update do, e.g. as compared to a mechanism forreplacing the complete menu with a new menu, possibly consisting oflarge still images.

Another advantage of the inventive method is that there is no confusionwhich menu to select if multiple optional downloads exist for a givendisc and only some of them are actually downloaded to a player. Evenwith multiple additional bonus content items a complete, correct menucan be generated, while for multiple downloaded menus the question iswhich of the downloaded menus should be used instead of the originalmenu.

A further advantage of the invention is that a menu with pre-authoredbutton placement is easier to handle for content authors because of itsuniversal approach, and therefore reduced flexibility due to strongerconstraints for the download, management and presentation processes.This leads e.g. to an easier production of the menu data on the medium.Moreover, the content provider or author has the possibility to designthe overall appearance of the menu in a consistent manner already at thetime when the disc is authored. Thus, the menu looks complete althoughthe graphical representation of the button, the “button image”, is notknown before the actual bonus content is being created. This providesnew artistic possibilities and freedom to the author, e.g. consistentdesign of menus, positioning of buttons before they exist, and adaptingthe bonus content button image design to the actual bonus content itemat any time.

Advantageous embodiments of the invention are disclosed in the dependentclaims, the following description and the figures.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Exemplary embodiments of the invention are described with reference tothe accompanying drawings, which show in

FIG. 1 an exemplary file system structure of a pre-recorded opticaldisc;

FIG. 2 a file system structure including a separate branch fordownloaded bonus content;

FIG. 3 the structure of subfolders for additional content and associatedmenu buttons;

FIG. 4 selection and activation of a bonus button associated with afirst download subfolder containing bonus content;

FIG. 5 selection and activation of a bonus button associated withanother download subfolder containing bonus content;

FIG. 6 selection and activation of two bonus buttons associated with twodifferent download folders, both of which containing bonus content;

FIG. 7 replacement of an original menu button with an activated bonusbutton;

FIG. 8 two buttons relating to bonus content being activatedpre-authored hidden bonus buttons, and an original menu button beingdisabled and invisible.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Exchangeable mass storage media for distribution of movies or other AVcontents may use a directory structure as shown exemplarily for Blu-raydiscs (BD) in FIG. 1. In a common root directory 1 is a branch, orfolder, for BD audio-visual data BDAV, which in turn has subfolders forplaylists 2, clip related information CLIPINF 3 and for the actual AVstreams STREAM 4. Each subfolder contains one or more files. For thistype, and other types, of advanced exchangeable storage systems thecontent not only consists of the multimedia entertainment material onthe medium, but it may also be possible to download additional,so-called bonus content from the Internet or another exchangeablestorage medium and store it on a local storage device, e.g. hard diskdrive (HDD), or alternatively download bonus content at presentationtime.

FIG. 2 shows the directory structure of an according to the inventionenhanced type of pre-recorded BD, with an additional branch DOWNLOADS 5for additional or bonus data relating to the contents of the disc. Atdisc creation time, only the names of the folder DOWNLOADS 5 and itssubfolders are determined The folders may be empty or contain emptyfiles with predefined names. The file system branch for downloaded dataDOWNLOADS 5 and its subfolders DownloadA, DownloadB, DownloadN caneither be on-disc, if the disc contains a recordable portion, orotherwise on a separate storage device, e.g. HDD within the player. Inthe latter case the DOWNLOAD branch for a specific disc is logicallyconnected to the disc file system as soon as that disc is inserted andready for playback. For simplicity, the figures show a merged view oforiginal file system structure on the pre-recorded disc plus thedownload branch.

Advantageously, the invention provides a low cost solution compared witha fully programmable solution such as a Java™ Virtual Machine. Accordingto the invention, only very low-level code needs to be executed toconvert an invisible button to a visible button under the condition thatsome bonus content becomes available, e.g. downloaded from the Internet.Such code does not require a high-level programming language such ase.g. Java™ or a fully programmable environment such as a PC, but can bea simple state machine based on firmware code. The function needed todetermine the state of, for example, “DownloadA present” may be realizedas a directory read request, counting the number of files within saiddirectory, with any number greater than e.g. 1 indicating that thisspecific download is indeed present. Such a directory read request isusually part of a player firmware anyway. When the download data arepresent, an appropriate placeholder is selected, replaced by a buttonand the button is activated, as described above.

Another advantage of the invention is that the menu can be designed sothat for the users perception there is no difference between menu itemsof on-disc and downloaded content. Additional menu items for additionalcontent that is available for playback can be seamlessly integrated intothe pre-recorded menu.

FIG. 3-6 show an embodiment of the invention, and how it may bepresented on a screen. As long as no bonus content is available, onlythe pre-authored original buttons B1, . . . , B4 are visible on a TVscreen with online menu. This is depicted in FIG. 3. For buttonsrelating to unavailable bonus contents, however, there are alreadylocations B5, . . . , B7 defined, but the actual bonus buttons arehidden. Though the bonus buttons are shown in FIG. 3-8 for clarity,their shapes or positions are not visible on a screen. There are alsofixed associations defined, by associating a first folder DownloadA forbonus content with a first button B5, a second folder DownloadB forbonus content with a second button B6, and a third folder DownloadN witha third button B7.

FIG. 4 shows the situation when a first bonus content was downloadedfrom the Internet or otherwise made available. As an example, it may bebackground information related to a movie on a disc. The bonus contentcomprises menu data including an attribute, e.g. “FolderName”, which hasthe value “DownloadA”. Therefore all files relating to the bonus contentare stored in the folder named “DownloadA”, which in turn is associatedto the first button placeholder B5. Therefore this button becomesactivated and visible. Its position, its appearance or both may bepre-defined, e.g. if the general type of bonus content is known at disccreation time, or may be defined by data contained in the downloadeddata. Other types of unique reference between the bonus data set, afolder and a particular button placeholder are possible as well, e.g.the bonus data set may contain an attribute that directly points to abutton placeholder, or a label that matches the label of a folder, orthe folders have a priority and are used in the order of their priority.

FIG. 5 shows a situation where another type of bonus content data wasdownloaded, e.g. a trailer for a new movie. In this case, the attribute“FolderName”, which is included in the bonus content, has the value“DownloadB”. Therefore all files File21, . . . , File2i relating to thebonus content are stored in the folder named “DownloadB”, which isassociated to the second button placeholder B6. Therefore this button isactivated and visible, with its position and appearance being defined asdescribed before.

A combination of the two cases is shown in FIG. 6. Both types of contentare available simultaneously and stored in the respective foldersDownloadA,DownloadB. Accordingly, both bonus buttons B5,B6 are visible,activated and selectable.

FIG. 7 shows an embodiment of the invention where the position of abonus button B6 is defined to be identical to the position of apre-existing button, so that the bonus button B6 is visible andactivated while the pre-existing button is deleted. E.g. the datadefining the bonus button may contain a position attribute thatoverwrites the buttons default position, or an attribute defining whichother pre-existing button to overwrite. This can be used whenpre-recorded content becomes obsolete, e.g. a downloaded advertisementtrailer for a new movie replaces a pre-recorded advertisement trailerfor a movie. Downloaded bonus content however may be replaced by otherbonus content if it is stored on a rewritable medium and this feature ispermitted. When downloaded content is deleted, the respective menubutton disappears and the placeholder is used again.

Further, the existence of bonus content may also modify the menu suchthat one or more pre-existing buttons are deleted, e.g. buttons that areobsolete. This is depicted in FIG. 8, where e.g. the coexistence ofbonus content data in DownloadA and DownloadB leads to visible displayand activation of two buttons B5 and B6 as described above, whiledeactivating and hiding one of the pre-existing buttons B3.

An advantage of the invention is that the author of such menu cananticipate at disc creation time the future existence of one or morebonus content items, and can adjust the graphical layout of the menuwith respect to its artistic appearance in such a way that the menu isartistically acceptable both without and with the associated one or morebuttons indicating the presence of additional bonus content items.

One aspect of this invention is that for specific button placeholderswithin a menu layout a fixed association is declared with certain fileswith pre-determined names or certain folder of the disc file system withpre-determined folder names. For example, the fixed association betweena particular folder DownloadA and a particular button place-holder B5,as described above, could be realized by first agreeing when designingthe overall system that always subfolders of “root/BDAV/DOWNLOADS/”shall contain the downloaded bonus content items, and then making thestring describing the subfolder, e.g. “DownloadA”, part of theplaceholder data for a button. Alternatively, subfolders might be simplyenumerated rather than named by strings. The desired numeral 1, 2, 3 . .. may then be part of the placeholder.

In one embodiment of the invention, a button placeholder consists ofbutton location information, information to which download subfolderthis placeholder is associated and information which action is to betaken when the button is pressed after it was activated. For an easyimplementation, the file names of the button images to be positioned atthe location of the respective placeholders can be decided at designtime of the system, for example it may be agreed that they must alwaysbe named “ButtonImage.jpg” and positioned within the associated downloadfolder, i.e. the files are“/root/BDAV/Downloads/DownloadA/ButtonImage.jpg” and“/root/BDAV/Downloads/DownloadB/ButtonImage.jpg” for DownloadA andDownloadB respectively. As an example, the conditions under which theinvisible placeholders of buttons become visible by changing them to thedownloaded button image are listed in the state table Tab.1. Each of twobuttons B5 and B6 is only visible when download data with acorresponding label DownloadA or DownloadB are available. The process ofactually reading the images and placing them in the menu can be executedby the player firmware.

TABLE 1 Exemplary conditions for usage of bonus buttons DownloadApresent DownloadB present B5 B6 no No invisible invisible yes No visibleinvisible No Yes invisible visible Yes yes visible visible

Furthermore, buttons in a menu need a definition of what happens whenthe “UP”, “DOWN”, “LEFT”, or “RIGHT” keys on the remote control arepressed. This is called chaining. If at a certain location a placeholderrather than a button is present, the navigation behaviour should reflectthis. This can be described with reference to FIG. 3. If a button B5 isonly present as a placeholder, and thus is invisible and inactive, andwhen currently the last regular button B4 is highlighted and thereforeselected, then the next selected button after pressing the “DOWN” keymay not be the invisible, inactive button B5. Depending on the design ofthe user interface, instead it should be either the same button B4 againor, as much more common in user interfaces, the first button B1. When abonus content item is downloaded into the folder labelled “DownloadA”,as shown in FIG. 4, the—now active—button B5 would be selected when thebutton B4 is highlighted and the “DOWN” key is pressed on a remotecontrol. The necessary changes in the chaining of buttons for navigationdepending on whether “DownloadA” or “DownloadB” or both are present areexemplarily described in Tab.2. E.g., if data in DownloadB are present,the third data line of Tab.2 is relevant. If the B4 button is currentlyselected and the “Down” button is pressed on the remote control, thefourth column is relevant, so that the next selected button is B6.

TABLE 2 Chaining of buttons for “Up” and “Down” commands DownloadDownload B4 and B4 and B5 and B5 and B6 and B6 and B1 and B1 and Apresent B present “Up” “Down” “Up” “Down” “Up” “Down” “Up” “Down” 0 0 B3B1 — — — — B4 B2 1 0 B3 B5 B4 B1 — — B5 B2 0 1 B3 B6 — — B4 B1 B6 B2 1 1B3 B5 B4 B6 B5 B1 B6 B2

The changes necessary for chaining buttons when pressing “LEFT” or“RIGHT” on the remote control may be done in a similar manner and areomitted here for brevity.

It is an advantage of the invention that it is very simple to implement.Each button placeholder defines the location of a single, later to beactivated button and describes under which conditions it can beactivated. In order to increase flexibility, again without necessity forhigh level programming, it is advantageous to send as part of thedownload information not only the button image of the new button to beactivated, but also additional configuration information for determiningwhether other, pre-existing buttons are to be hidden and disabled, andhow the location of the new button on the menu shall be. Hence,downloading a bonus content item may allow modification of the layout ofbuttons for the menu without actually reloading all of the graphicalcomponents of said menu.

In one embodiment of the invention, the inventive method for composing amenu that presents content selection choices to a user comprises thefollowing steps: one or more placeholders for a button are definedwithin the menu data stored on an exchangeable storage medium, and apre-defined location or naming convention for later-to-be-downloadedbonus content items is determined so that a unique association can bemade between a specific bonus content item and one of the placeholders,wherein the association is declared as attribute of said placeholder,and a button image representing in a graphical way the bonus contentitem and being downloaded together with said bonus content item isprovided. Furthermore, configuration information is provided for theplacement of the respective button replacing said placeholder, as wellas for the navigation chaining of said button to other pre-existing orbonus buttons, with this configuration information being downloadedtogether with said bonus content item. During playback of the contentsretrieved from the storage medium, the presence or absence of any ofsaid bonus content items on another data source, e.g. HDD, is identifiedand—in case of its presence—the associated placeholder is replaced withthe associated button image, potentially including a repositioning ofsaid button according to said configuration information. Applying ofsaid downloaded button configuration may lead to the insertion ofadditional button objects downloaded as part of said bonus content item,and/or to omission of button objects previously available in the menu.The inventive method enables an associated action to be taken when saidbutton is selected by the user, with said action being described eitheralready together with the placeholder, e.g. “play PlayList BonusA”, with“BonusA” being a playlist not present on disc initially, or beingdescribed as part of the downloaded bonus content item and bound to themenu together with the downloaded button image.

While the proposed invention does not offer the flexibility of a fullyprogrammable approach, where such menu design choices can be made onlywhen a specific bonus content item is created, it allows from the userperspective a similar feature, namely seamless presentation ofdownloaded content choices together with on-disc content choices, whilebeing much less costly to implement and still leaving the artisticdesign choices with the disc creator.

A storage medium according to the invention contains menu data forpresenting content selection choices to the user, and within the menudata one or more pre-defined placeholders for one or more buttons.Further, there is a pre-defined location or naming convention definedfor later-to-be-downloaded bonus content items, so that a uniqueassociation can be made between a specific bonus content item and one ofthe placeholders. This association is declared as attribute of saidplaceholder. Button image data representing in a graphical way the bonuscontent item may be downloaded together with the actual bonus content.

In one embodiment of the invention a playback device may determine thatany of said bonus content items is present, and thereupon replace theplaceholder for a button with the associated button image and enable anassociated action to be taken when said button is selected by the user.Said action may be described either already together with theplaceholder, or it may be described as part of the downloaded bonuscontent item and associated to the menu together with the downloadedbutton image.

The size of a button, or the distance between buttons may vary,depending on the total numbers of visible buttons.

The invention can be applied for menus on all types of storage media. Itis particularly advantageous for pre-recorded exchangeable media, suchas Blu-ray discs or DVDs, and playback devices with access to additionalstorage capabilities, such as a HDD or Internet connection.

1. A method for automatically composing an electronic audio-visual menufor selection of playback of audio-visual data, wherein a first portionof audio-visual data and a first portion of menu data is retrieved froma first storage medium being an exchangeable pre-recorded medium, andwherein a second portion of audio-visual data and a second portion ofmenu data are obtained from a second data source, the second data sourcebeing a local storage in a playback device, wherein said second portionof menu data has at least one first attribute associated and whereinsaid second portion of menu data contains navigation chaininginformation, the method comprising the steps of logically connecting thedata from the second data source to a file system of the data from thefirst storage medium; generating an initial menu from the first portionof menu data, wherein the first portion of menu data comprisesaudio-visual data, the initial menu containing one or more visible,selectable buttons and at least one invisible placeholder that cannot beselected, wherein the placeholder has at least one second attributeassociated with said placeholder; extracting said first attributeassociated with the second portion of menu data; comparing saidextracted first attribute with said second attribute associated with theplaceholder; and based on said comparison, if both attributes match,replacing the placeholder with a visible and selectable button definedby the second portion of menu data; wherein the second data source isdifferent from said first storage medium and wherein said second portionof audio-visual data comprises no menu data, and said second portion ofmenu data comprises audio-visual menu data, and wherein said navigationchaining information defines a button to be selected next upon a userinput of one of “UP”, “DOWN”, “LEFT” and “RIGHT” keys on a remotecontrol.